It’s All About The Attitude

An athlete’s attitude going into a practice, a game, or even competition can determine the success of the athlete.

Your attitude affects the way you perform in a way that will help you and bring you to the gold. Or it can bring you down and lead you to some of your worst performances.

Unfortunately I learned this first hand.

In my last blog I had just finished writing about how I won the All-Around, Bars, and Floor in my Massachusetts State Championship competition. My journey, however, did not end there.

I had qualified to travel to the New England Regional Championships, which included the best of the best from all of New England and New York.

I was not excited about this competition as it had a bad reputation for being poorly run, and with my back causing me more pain than it ever had before, I was not looking forward to competing. Since I had already been picked to join the Massachusetts Senior National Team competing in May and New England’s was the end of February, my body and my mind were dying for a break after four long months of competing.

I had a week to prepare for the competition but my mind was not in it. This, as I would learn, would be one of my biggest mistakes. As my coach and I arrived at a local high school in Connecticut on a chilly, snowy, Saturday morning, our mood was tired and not ready.

Looking back I ask myself why I wasn’t more excited for such a big competition as it was an honor to qualify for it. To this today I regret not going in with a better attitude.

At any rate, we arrived at the meet and I started on bars. This was good, this wasone of my strongest events. So when I clapped my hands together and a cloud of chalk exploded from them I thought I was ready. I turned and saluted the judges. The routine was over in about 45 seconds, but I had fallen once and hit my feet on the floor during one of my skills. I hadn’t done that all season and as a result received the lowest score of my season.

I went to beam next, and once again fell during my routine. I didn’t even want to look in the stands for my parents, wanting to avoid their disappointed faces.

After two bad events I was ready for a come back on floor. So I pulled it together and did a nearly perfect routine receiving a great score. Last, however, was vault, where I pulled off one mediocre vault and then fell on my second one. With the meet over I received my lowest all-around score of the season, when it should have been the opposite.

My parents weren’t disappointed because of how badly I did, but because of the mindset I entered the meet with. I could have fallen five times on all events and my parents would still have been proud as me as long as I went in with a good attitude.

Although this was not a highlight of my senior year season I did learn a very valuable and important lesson. So because of this I was even more ready to go to Nationals so I could prove just how much I deserved to be there.

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1 thoughts on “It’s All About The Attitude”

Julia,
I really liked reading about your experience as a gymnast. I’m so impressed that you were a state champion! That’s an amazing accomplishment. Having played sports in high school as well, I could definitely relate to the ideas you were discussing in this post. My performance in a game was notably altered by the attitude and mindset I had when I took to the field. It’s great that you were able to take this experience and learn from it. Sometimes it was really hard for me to work past bad performances in a game, but as you noted this is an invaluable skill for an athlete to have. In reading your previous posts, I noticed that you mentioned your coach wasn’t supportive your senior year. Do you think this could have affected your performance? Did you feel prepared going into this competition? If these types of issues were affecting you, how did you learn to work past them?
One other point I noticed in your post was that you said you regretted not going into this competition with a better attitude. I can understand why you feel this way, but do you regret having this learning opportunity?
Your post was really engaging and conversational. I enjoyed reading!